and butter involved. Properly attended to, fuller justice is done to
both lawyer and client. An exorbitant fee should never be claimed. As
a general rule, never take your whole fee in advance, nor any more
than a small retainer. When fully paid beforehand, you are more than
a common mortal if you can feel the same interest in the case as if
something was still in prospect for you as well as for your client. And
when you lack interest in the case the job will very likely lack skill
and diligence in the performance. Settle the amount of fee and take a
note in advance. Then you will feel that you are working for something,
and you are sure to do your work faithfully and well. Never sell a fee
note,--at least not before the consideration service is performed. It
leads to negligence and dishonesty,--negligence by losing interest in
the case, and dishonesty in refusing to refund when you have allowed the
consideration to fail."
If a client was poor he charged him accordingly, and if he was unable to
pay asked nothing for his services. It was one of his theories that a
lawyer, like a minister of the Gospel or a physician, was in duty bound
to render service whenever called upon, regardless of the prospects
of compensation, and in several cases he offered his services without
compensation to people who had suffered injustice and were unable to
pay. As a rule, his fees were less than those of other lawyers of his
circuit. Justice Davis once remonstrated with him, and insisted that he
was doing a grave injustice to his associates at the bar by charging so
little for his services. From 1850 to 1860 his income varied from two
to three thousand dollars, and even when he was recognized as one of
the ablest lawyers of the State his fee-book frequently shows charges
of three dollars, five dollars, and one dollar for advice, although he
never went into court for less than ten dollars. During that period
he was at the height of his power and popularity, and lawyers of less
standing and talent charged several times those amounts. But avarice
was the least of his faults.
While he was President a certain Senator was charged with an attempt
to swindle the government out of some millions. Discussing the scandal
one day with some friends, he remarked that he could not understand why
men should be so eager after wealth. "Wealth," said he, "is simply a
superfluity of what we don't need."
An examination of the dockets of the Illinois Supreme Court shows that
during a period of twenty years, beginning with 1840 and ending with his
election to the Presidency, he had nearly one hundred cases before that
court, which is an unusual record and has been surpassed by few lawyers
in the history of the State and by none of his contemporaries. It was
declared, in an oration delivered by one of his associates, that "In his
career as a lawyer he traversed a wide range of territory, attended many
courts and had a variety of cases, and in all his conflicts at the bar
he was successful in every case where he ought to have been."
When he went to Washington to become President his debts were entirely
paid and he was worth about ten thousand dollars in real estate and
other property.
[Illustration: Copyright, 1900, by McClure, Phillips & Co.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN IN THE SUMMER OF 1860
From a negative taken for M. C. Tuttle, of St. Paul, Minnesota, for
local use in the presidential campaign]
A singular story is told of a case in which a good many prominent men
were involved besides Lincoln. Abraham Brokaw, of Bloomington, loaned
five hundred dollars to one of his neighbors and took a note, which
remained unpaid. Action was brought, the sheriff levied on the property
of the debtor and collected the entire amount, but neglected to turn the
proceeds over. Brokaw employed Stephen A. Douglas, who collected the
amount from the bondsman of the sheriff, but returned to his seat in the
Senate at Washington without making a settlement. Like some other great
men, Douglas was very careless about money matters, and, after appealing
to him again and again, Brokaw employed David Davis to bring suit
against the Senator. Being an intimate friend and fellow-Democrat,
Davis disliked to appear in the case, and by his advice Brokaw engaged
the services of Lincoln. The latter wrote to Douglas at Washington
that he had a claim against him for collection and must insist upon
prompt payment. Douglas became very indignant and reproached Brokaw for
placing such a political weapon in the hands of an abolitionist. Brokaw
sent Douglas's letter to Lincoln, and the latter employed "Long John"
Wentworth, then a Democratic member of Congress from Chicago, as an
associate in the case. Wentworth saw Douglas, persuaded him to pay the
money, and forwarded five hundred dollars to Lincoln, who, in turn, paid
it to Brokaw and sent him a bill of three dollars and fifty cents for
professional services.
Lincoln's greatest legal triumph was the acquittal of an old neighbor
named Duff Armstrong, who was charged with murder, and several witnesses
testified that they saw the accused commit the deed one night about
eleven o'clock. Lincoln attempted no cross-examination, except to
persuade them to reiterate their statements and to explain that they
were able to see the act distinctly because of the bright moonlight.
By several of the prosecuting witnesses he proved the exact position
and size of the moon at the time of the murder. The prosecution there
rested, and Lincoln, addressing the court and the jury, announced that
he had no defence to submit except an almanac, which would show that
there was no moon on that night. The State's attorney was paralyzed, but
the court admitted the almanac as competent testimony, and every witness
was completely impeached and convicted of perjury. The verdict was not
guilty.
One of the most important cases in which Lincoln was ever engaged
involved the ownership of a patent for the reaping machines manufactured
by Cyrus H. McCormick, of Chicago, who sued John Manny, of Rockford,
for infringement. McCormick was represented by E. N. Dickerson and
Reverdy Johnson. Manny was represented by Edwin M. Stanton, who
was afterwards Lincoln's Secretary of War; Peter H. Watson, who
was afterwards Assistant Secretary of War; and George Harding, of
Philadelphia. The case was tried in Cincinnati, and, to his intense
disappointment and chagrin, Lincoln was not allowed to make an argument
he had prepared because the court would not permit four arguments on
one side and only two on the other. Lincoln was extremely anxious to
meet in debate Reverdy Johnson, of Baltimore, who was then regarded by
many as the leader of the American bar; but he accepted the situation
gracefully though regretfully, watched the case closely as it proceeded,
took careful notes which he furnished Mr. Harding, and gave the latter
the benefit of his written argument, but requested him not to show it to
Mr. Stanton. There is no doubt that he felt that Mr. Stanton had been
guilty of professional discourtesy in refusing to insist that the court
hear Lincoln as well as himself, believing that this concession would
have been granted if the demand had been pressed, or if Mr. Stanton had
proposed that the time allowed for argument be divided. Mr. Stanton was
not unaware of Lincoln's wishes, for they were fully explained to him by
Mr. Harding, who urged him to give Lincoln an opportunity to speak, but,
being the senior counsel in the case, he assigned Mr. Harding, who was a
patent expert, to submit the technical side of the case, and assumed the
entire responsibility of making the legal argument himself.
This incident is particularly interesting in connection with the future
relations between the two men, and it is certain that Lincoln was
profoundly impressed with Mr. Stanton's ability in the presentation of
his case. The matter was never alluded to by either during their long
and intimate association at Washington. A young lawyer from Rockford who
had studied with Lincoln was in Cincinnati at the time and attended the
trial. When the court adjourned after Stanton's argument they walked
together to their hotel. Mr. Emerson says that Lincoln seemed dejected,
and, turning to him suddenly, exclaimed in an impulsive manner,--
"Emerson, I am going home to study law."
"'Why,' I exclaimed, 'Mr. Lincoln, you stand at the head of the bar in
Illinois now! What are you talking about?'
"'Ah, yes,' he said, 'I do occupy a good position there, and I think
I can get along with the way things are done there now. But these
college-trained men, who have devoted their whole lives to study, are
coming West, don't you see? And they study their cases as we never
do. They have got as far as Cincinnati now. They will soon be in
Illinois.' Another long pause; then stopping and turning towards me, his
countenance suddenly assuming that look of strong determination which
those who knew him best sometimes saw upon his face, he exclaimed, 'I am
going home to study law! I am as good as any of them, and when they get
out to Illinois I will be ready for them.'"
While Mr. Lincoln was not a sensitive man in the ordinary sense of that
term, he felt keenly his own deficiencies in education; nor did he lose
this feeling when his ability as a statesman was recognized by the
entire universe and he held the destiny of a nation in his grasp. Once,
when a famous lawyer called at the White House and referred courteously
to his eminent position at the bar, he replied, "Oh, I am only a
mast-fed lawyer," referring to his limited education. "Mast" is a kind
of food composed of acorns, grass, and similar natural substances which
was commonly given to cattle and hogs in Indiana and other frontier
States when he was a boy.
Conscious of his deficiencies, he never ceased to be a student. Until
the very day of his death he was eager to acquire knowledge, and no new
subject was ever presented to him without exciting his inquisitiveness
and determination to learn all there was to know about it. Of this
characteristic he once remarked to a friend,--
"In the course of my law reading I constantly came upon the word
demonstrate--I thought at first that I understood its meaning, but soon
became satisfied that I did not. I consulted Webster's Dictionary. That
told of certain proof, 'proof beyond the probability of doubt;' but I
could form no sort of idea what sort of proof that was.
"I consulted all the dictionaries and books of reference I could find,
but with no better results. You might as well have defined blue to a
blind man. At last I said, 'Lincoln, you can never make a lawyer if you
do not understand what demonstrate means;' and I left my situation in
Springfield, went home to my father's house, and stayed there until I
could give any proposition in the six books of Euclid at sight. I then
found out what demonstrate meant, and went back to my law studies."
He met every new question with the same disposition, and nobody
ever knew better how to dig for the root of a subject than he. When
his children began to go to school, he used to study with them, and
frequently referred to the many interesting points of information and
the valuable knowledge he acquired in that way. The lawyers who were
associated with him upon the circuit relate how often he was accustomed
to pull a book from his pocket whenever he had an idle moment, and it
was quite as frequently a treatise on astronomy or engineering or a
medical lecture as a collection of poems or speeches.
But, with all his modesty and diffidence, he never hesitated to meet
with confidence the most formidable opponent at the bar or on the stump,
and frequently, when reading accounts of litigation in which famous
lawyers were engaged, he would express a wish that he might some time
"tackle" them in a court-room. He once said that in all his practice at
the bar he had never been surprised by the strength of the testimony or
the arguments of his adversary, and usually found them weaker than he
feared. This was due to a habit he acquired early in his practice of
studying the opposite side of every disputed question in every law case
and every political issue quite as carefully as his own side. When he
had an important case on hand he was accustomed to withdraw himself into
a room where he would not be disturbed, or, what he liked better, to
get out into the fields or the woods around Springfield where there was
nothing to distract his thoughts, in order to "argue it out in my own
mind," as he put it; and when he returned to his house or his office he
would usually have a clear conception of his case and have formed his
plan of action.
He argued great causes in which principles were involved with all the
zeal and earnestness that a righteous soul could feel. Trifling causes
he dismissed with the ridicule in which he was unsurpassed, and his
associates relate many incidents when a verdict was rendered in a gale
of laughter because of the droll tactics used by Lincoln. He never
depended upon technicalities or the tricks of the profession. He never
attempted to throw obstacles in the way of justice, or to gain an
unfair advantage of his adversaries, but was capable of executing legal
manooeuvres with as much skill as any of his rivals. He adapted himself
to circumstances with remarkable ease, and his thorough knowledge of
human nature enabled him to excite the interest and sympathy of a jury
by getting very close to their hearts. He argued much from analogy; he
used old-fashioned words and homely phrases which were familiar to the
jurymen he desired to impress, and illustrated his points by stories,
maxims, and figures often droll and sometimes vulgar, because he knew
that he could make it plainer to them in that way and that they would
better understand the force and bearing of his arguments. He relied more
upon this method of convincing a jury than upon exhibitions of learning
or flights of eloquence, and his acquaintance with human nature was even
more intimate than his knowledge of the law.
Few of his speeches at the bar have been preserved, but his
contemporaries have left us many interesting reminiscences of his
originality and power. His ungainly form and awkward gesticulations
enhanced the force of his arguments and attracted the attention and
sympathy of a country jury more than the most graceful manners and
elegant rhetoric could have done. It was always his rule, in presenting
a case, to cut out all of the "dead wood" and get down to "hard pan,"
as he called it, as soon as possible. In making such concessions he
would establish a position of fairness and honesty, and often disarmed
his opponent by leaving the impression that he had accidentally "given
away his case." Then he would rely upon his remarkable habit of order
and command of logic to bring his evidence forward in a clear and strong
light, keeping unnecessary details away from the attention of the
jury and pressing only the essential points with which he expected to
convince them. Sometimes, when his opponent seemed to have captured a
verdict, he would abandon his serious argument and begin to tell stories
one after another with more or less application, until by such diversion
he had effaced from the minds of the jury every impression that the
other side had made.
Justice Lawrence Weldon, of the United States Court of Claims, in his
reminiscences says, "One of the most interesting incidents in my early
acquaintance with Mr. Lincoln was a lawsuit in which Mr. Lincoln was
counsel for the plaintiff and I was counsel for the defendant. Even
then, in a trial that was the sensation of an obscure village on the
prairies, Mr. Lincoln showed that supreme sense of justice to God and
his fellow-men.
"It was a family quarrel between two brothers-in-law, Jack Dungee and
Joe Spencer. Dungee was a Portuguese, extremely dark-complexioned, but
not a bad-looking fellow; and after a time he married Spencer's sister,
with the approval of Spencer's family. I don't remember the origin of
the quarrel, but it became bitter; and the last straw was laid on when
Spencer called Dungee a 'nigger' and followed it up, they say, by adding
'a nigger married to a white woman.' The statute of Illinois made it
a crime for a negro to marry a white woman, and, because of that, the
words were slanderous. Dungee, through Mr. Lincoln, brought the suit for
slander. Judge David Davis was on the bench, and the suit was brought in
the De Witt Circuit Court. When the case came up, Mr. Moore and myself
appeared for the defence and demurred to the declaration, which, to
the annoyance of Mr. Lincoln, the court sustained. Whatever interest
Mr. Lincoln took in the case before that time, his professional pride
was aroused by the fact that the court had decided that his papers
were deficient. Looking across the trial table at Moore and myself and
shaking his long, bony finger, he said, 'Now, by jing, I will beat you
boys!'
"At the next term of the court Mr. Lincoln appeared with his papers
amended, and fully determined to make good his promise to 'beat the
boys!' and we thought his chances pretty good to do it, too. We knew our
man was a fool not to have settled it, but still we were bound to defend
and clear him if we could.
"In the argument of the case on the testimony Mr. Lincoln made a most
powerful and remarkable speech, abounding in wit, logic, and eloquence
of the highest order. His thoughts were clothed in the simplest garb of
expression and in words understood by every juror in the box. After
the instructions were given by the court the jury retired, and in a few
moments returned with a judgment for the plaintiff, in a sum which was a
large amount for those days.
"Mr. Lincoln's advice to his client was that Dungee agree to remit
the whole judgment, by Spencer paying the costs of the suit and Mr.
Lincoln's fee. Mr. Lincoln then proposed to leave the amount of his
fee to Moore and myself. We protested against this, and insisted that
Mr. Lincoln should fix the amount of his own fee. After a few moments'
thought he said, 'Well, gentlemen, don't you think I have honestly
earned twenty-five dollars?' We were astonished, and had he said one
hundred dollars it would have been what we expected. The judgment was
a large one for those days; he had attended the case at two terms of
court, had been engaged for two days in a hotly contested suit, and his
client's adversary was going to pay the bill. The simplicity of Mr.
Lincoln's character in money matters is well illustrated by the fact
that for all this he charged twenty-five dollars."
Justice David Davis, of the Supreme Court of the United States, said,
"In all the elements that constitute the great lawyer he had few equals.
He was great both at _nisi prius_ and before an appellate tribunal. He
seized the strong points of a cause and presented them with clearness
and great compactness. His mind was logical and direct, and he did
not indulge in extraneous discussion. Generalities and platitudes had
no charms for him. An unfailing vein of humor never deserted him; and
he was able to claim the attention of court and jury, when the cause
was the most uninteresting, by the appropriateness of his anecdotes.
His power of comparison was large, and he rarely failed in a legal
discussion to use that mode of reasoning. The framework of his mental
and moral being was honesty, and a wrong cause was poorly defended by
him. He hated wrong and oppression everywhere, and many a man whose
fraudulent conduct was undergoing review in a court of justice has
writhed under his terrific indignation and rebukes. The people where
he practised law were not rich, and his charges were always small.
When he was elected President, I question whether there was a lawyer
in the circuit, who had been at the bar so long a time, whose means
were not larger. It did not seem to be one of the purposes of his life
to accumulate a fortune. In fact, outside of his profession, he had no
knowledge of the way to make money, and he never even attempted it."
Lincoln was associated at the Springfield bar with many famous men,
and there was a keen rivalry among them. Stephen A. Douglas, David
Davis, James Shields, Edward D. Baker, John M. Palmer, Lyman Trumbull,
Oliver H. Browning, Shelby M. Cullom, and others afterwards sat in the
United States Senate and some of them held positions in the Cabinets
of Presidents. Others were afterwards Governors of States and members
of the House of Representatives; others led armies during the war with
Mexico and the war between the States. One of the strongest groups of
men that ever gathered at the capital of a State was to be found in
Springfield in those days, and Lincoln was their equal in ability and
learning and the superior of many of them in the qualities that make
a statesman. They recognized him as their superior on many occasions,
and whether or not he was the ablest lawyer on the circuit, there was
never any doubt that he was the most popular. He was always a great
favorite with the younger members of the bar because of his sympathy
and good-nature. He never used the arts of a demagogue; he was never a
toady; he was always ready to do an act of kindness; he was generous
with his mind and with his purse; although he never asked for help, was
always ready to give it; and while he received everybody's confidence,
he rarely gave his own in return. Whatever his cares and anxieties may
have been, he never inflicted them upon others; he never wounded by his
wit; his humor was never harsh or rude; he endeavored to lighten the
labors and the cares of others, and beneath his awkward manner was a
gentle refinement and an amiable disposition.
For twenty-five years he practised at the Springfield bar. He was not
a great lawyer according to the standard of his profession, but the
testimony of his associates is that he was a good one, enjoying the
confidence of the judiciary, the bar, and the public to a remarkable
degree. He was conspicuous for several honorable traits, and, above
all, for that sense of moral responsibility that can always distinguish
between duty to a client and duty to society and the truth. On the
wrong side of a case he was always weak, and, realizing this, he often
persuaded his clients to give up litigation rather than compel him to
argue against truth and justice.
Leonard Swett, of Chicago, for years an intimate associate, and himself
one of the most famous of American lawyers, says that, "sometimes, after
Lincoln entered upon a criminal case, the conviction that his client was
guilty would affect him with a sort of panic. On one occasion he turned
suddenly to his associate and said, 'Swett, the man is guilty; you
defend him, I can't,' and so gave up his share of a large fee.
"At another time, when he was engaged with Judge S. C. Parks in
defending a man accused of larceny, he said, 'If you can say anything
for the man, do it, I can't; if I attempt it, the jury will see I think
he is guilty, and convict him.'
"Once he was prosecuting a civil suit, in the course of which evidence
was introduced showing that his client was attempting a fraud. Lincoln
rose and went to his hotel in deep disgust. The judge sent for him; he
refused to come. 'Tell the judge,' he said, 'my hands are dirty; I came
over to wash them.' We are aware that these stories detract something
from the character of the lawyer; but this inflexible, inconvenient, and
fastidious morality was to be of vast service afterwards to his country
and to the world. The fact is that, with all his stories and jests, his
frank companionable humor, his gift of easy accessibility and welcome,
he was a man of grave and serious temper and of unusual innate dignity
and reserve. He had few or no special intimates, and there was a line
beyond which no one ever thought of passing."